Legal scholar Ronald Rotunda, whose course book on constitutional law greeted thousands of law school students over the last three decades, died suddenly of pneumonia at a hospital last week. He was 73.

Rotunda, the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and distinguished professor of jurisprudence at Chapman University, Dale E. Fowler School of Law, was also an expert on legal ethics and has been credited with helping establish professional ethics as a discipline to be taught and studied at law schools.